


we know when it's gone

by captainangua



Series: SPN spec ficlets [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Castiel Bears the Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Gen, Grieving Dean Winchester, M/M, Ma'lak Box (Supernatural), Mark of Cain (Supernatural), Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap, Purgatory, Suicidal Thoughts, Vampire Dean Winchester, not very slashy in either sense mostly just sad, or y'know strange adjacent coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:47:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22305913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: Fuck, he was just so tired of being alone.*Vampire Dean gets away after his brother's clock stops.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: SPN spec ficlets [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/99038
Comments: 9
Kudos: 69





	we know when it's gone

**Author's Note:**

> more than my customary zero i have three entire coda fics thought out for this episode because bobo fucked me up what a star.
> 
> anyway, so did they really both die in that last scene with chuck?? like are we sure??
> 
> so future vamp!dean stops hissing, starts angsting.

Dean took his time with Bobby – it was twisted, and pointless, but he wasn’t as hungry and he wanted to make him pay for taking Sam away from him. And besides, it wasn’t _his_ Bobby, just one more fake, just like Dean wasn’t really himself anymore.

And, probably most important, he didn’t want to be left to face that he was the last one left standing.

What was it Cas had promised him once?

_Everyone, except me._

Yeah. That hadn’t worked out so well.

*

As a new vamp, hunger was still his strongest urge, but now there was grief, and there was shame, the way there hadn’t been before he'd been left alone. Usually when he started feeling this low he’d pray to Cas and spill his guts to the empty air. But Dean couldn't be sure anymore that he deserves to pray or that he even could. Did vampires have human enough souls to be worth hearing?

So instead of praying Dean kept himself fed, and he kept himself moving, and he caught movie marathons here and there. For the first time he was glad his mom hadn't live to see how it had all turned out.

Sam was gone. Once that would have been enough to stop Dean moving, but something about the way that everyone had been picked off and torn away from him had changed things. He’d prepared himself for losing Sam long before the vampirism - he just hadn’t expected to stick around to see much of the aftermath.

A month after he’d killed Jody and Bobby and he was still feeding – but he started focusing on animals or people he felt deserved it. A few times it didn’t take much to deserve it, but still. It wasn’t so different from his old life. 

He was just so crushingly alone.

Alone like he’d left Benny alone.

Dean thought about Benny a lot. Maybe if he ended it all and killed himself he’d see him again - maybe he really was still down there with Sam. Dean imagined it would be easier to forget everything he was missing if he was back in Purgatory. He wouldn’t feel like a monster there, wouldn’t feel punished.

And if Dean got there and found that there wasn’t any Sam or Benny waiting for him down there then he could just slip up one day and follow them into nothingness. It was starting to sound peaceful, nothingness. Dean had existed for so long now and died so many times and whatever he did it was never the finish line. They’d beaten so many monsters, so many gods, and still they never got to win a happy ending, or even an ending. Nothing they’d done had been enough.

Cas has asked him once if he’d really take freedom over peace. He wanted to get back there and scream in his own face _peace, pick peace you stupid, stubborn sonofabitch._

But every day he kept getting up, kept on moving.

And eventually he found himself back at Cas’s grave. It hadn’t exactly been on purpose, he’d just...

Fuck, he was just so tired of being alone.

Vampire strength meant that he didn’t really need a shovel, and since he hadn’t thought to bring one he got down on his hands and knees and started pulling up the earth with his own hands. The mud stained his fingernails and Dean felt more solid, more real than he had in nearly a year. Finally, there was something he knew that he wanted, that he knew he could have, that was very literally in reach.

Around him, the trees were flattened, the house windows were shattered. Cas has been screaming, though he wasn’t screaming now. He had to know Dean was above him, come to undo his mistakes, his sacrifice. Dean wondered what Cas felt about that with a kind of detached curiosity. 

Somehow Dean had always known this would be where he’d end up. He’d given Sam a million excuses, a million good reasons why they’d had to bury Cas in the Earth, and not sink him underwater like Dean had once planned for them to do to him.

What if the box was protected against every known magic but not against rust? What if some treasure hunter pulled it up? What if -

But none of those concerns had been true, he just hadn’t been able to admit it until now.

And then, still kneeling, now on the coffin itself, Dean said, “Cas. Hey, buddy, you listening?”

The box was still.

“Things have changed since we put you down there.”

That was a coward’s “we”. It might have been a joint plan, but Dean had been the bait. He’d prayed then too.

“You can probably tell I’m not so alive anymore. Well Sammy’s even less so. It’s just me now.”

Suddenly it didn’t seem so important who the monsters had got before and after Dean had joined Team Monster. The people he loved were gone. He didn’t feel anymore guilt over the ones he’d killed himself than the ones he’d let die.

He’d drank Jody dry himself but he still felt more guilt over letting Cas take the mark.

But then, it was Cas.

“I’m gonna get you outta there,” Dean said, his voice still feeling rough from ill-use. “I hope you don’t end me, I guess. I don’t really fancy purgatory this time of year." He paused, like he was hoping for Cas to laugh somewhere in there.

"But you do what you have to, man. I ain’t got no place left to make judgements from. I probably never did. I just... I wanted to help the people I loved. And mostly they were good people. But now there’s just you and me. And maybe we’re not good people anymore, and maybe we’re not even people. But if this is how I go then I’m grateful.”

He wiped the back of his hand roughly over his eyes.

“Hell, I just wanna see you again.”

Dean opened the box.

*

*


End file.
